YOUTH SPORTS SIDELINES: The home run & the high-five

It was so unassuming that you could have almost missed it -- but for me, it was one of the best moments I've experienced in watching youth sports.

Pete Chianca

I do not mean to sound braggy when I say that my son Tim, who turns 13 this August, has become a home run machine. Last night he hit his fifth and sixth of the season over the fence at his beloved home field, beloved because of a right-field fence that seems ideally positioned to fall short of the shots this lefty batter rockets in its general direction. It’s a wonder to see, particularly if you happen to be one of his parents who may or may not be living vicariously through him. I’m just saying.

So whenever I mention Tim’s baseball achievements to my siblings I get the same response: “Just like his father!” This is (spoiler alert!) sarcasm, because they’re well aware that I never hit a home run during my short-lived baseball career -- the closest I came was a triple that was such an unusual occurrence that I called every relative I knew after the game to tell them about it, including Uncle Larry, with whom I don’t think I’d ever had an actual conversation up to that point, and who wasn’t my uncle for much longer afterwards. Not sure if the phone call had anything to do with that, and I don't want to know.

Anyway, Timmy would spend a lot of time on the phone if he had to call the whole family every time he got a good hit. Not that it isn’t well earned -- this is his second year in an “elite” baseball program (at great personal expense to his parents) that involves three intensive practices a week from November-March before the season finally kicks off. He plays four games every weekend with that squad, in addition to the two games a week with his town team. He loves every minute of every game, and we love watching him. Especially after the cold and rainy part of the season ends, which happened -- wait, let me check my calendar -- yesterday.

But I’m actually not here to talk about Tim so much as to mention something that happened when he hit his second home run last night. It happened quickly and without fanfare, but as Tim rounded second, the opposing shortstop raised his arm to offer a high five that Tim stoically returned as he continued his trot around the bases. It was so unassuming that you could have almost missed it -- but for me, it was one of the best moments I’ve experienced in watching youth sports.

This was an out-of-town team, so Tim didn’t know these kids like he does when he plays another hometown squad. This was just one 12-year-old, maybe one who loves the game just as much as Timmy does, giving props to another as he rounded the bases on a breezy spring night. It felt like a pure sports moment, especially when you compare it to the spectacle down the road at the Boston Garden the night before, when Milan Lucic chewed out the Canadiens’ Dale Weiss in the handshake line.

I’m sure it won’t be long before Tim’s games become much more heated -- next year he moves to a larger field where competition will be tougher and home runs won’t come so easily, and tensions are bound to run higher. And after all, he’s already been jaundiced by professional baseball and round-the-clock ESPN: When I mentioned the high-five afterward he was skeptical as to whether it had been appropriate, noting “They don’t do that in the pros.”

I told him that even if they don't, they probably should. And so should he, for as long as possible -- or at least while he's still on the small field.